[click poem titles to open/close]

Poetry collections for sale in shop.

from White Rhino

Out of the anthracite night
Doe-eyed and hind-lurching
Frozen snapshot headlight-lit flash

Into the crumple zone
Buckling and bouncing
Skating akimbo, turning to ditch

If your mutilated body
Could rise
And you could shake off
The dried blood
You would walk naked:
A pale two-legg'ed ghost,
Breasts a resting place
For moonlight.

On the silent road four hooves upturned:
Scythed saplings
Shouldered by nettles
No one drives past
No one notices.

from White Rhino

We walked together
On a shore,
Neither moved to scream.
"Too tired for all that,"
You said,
And "look at those
Funny dogs."
We were leaving
Your Winter Studio,
The hour was
Blue.
You stared with
Weak eyes
Like an elk
Peering through
Mist
"Do not leave me,"
Your expression
Said.
Your voice was
The echo
Of the closing door.

from The Meaning of Life

I am not worthy
To tie the bootlaces of my forefathers
I have not scratched
Even the surface of
Their suffering and
Know nothing like
Their sacrifices
Requirements to display mettle
Have not been demanded of me
To them compared
I am a baby
My tadpole challenges
Are less than one mote
Of grit washed by the
Tears from their eyes
They are gods
They are stone effigies of
Crystalline granite
And I am the shard of
A trodden-on shell.
I am not worthy
To inherit the peaceable
Kingdom they have cleaved
Their souls to prepare for me.
I do not deserve the
Land they have forged
With their blood, sweat
And pain.
I am not worthy.

from The Meaning of Life

After

48 hours of rain (drizzle)
Came one hundred butterflies

To the Butterfly Bush

Gagging for it
Proboscises stuck out
High excitement, flutter
A summer sale in the garden
Wanting to exhaust that shrub
Leave it panting, glistening, sweating
Wet with nectar, dripping, fronds drooping,
Arching, purple smiles inverted

So many beatings of wings
With a rustle as silent as
After a telephone rings

In the middle of the night and stops.

uncollected (for Terje Andersen)

And he sits in his Oslo flat
gazing with his mind at the
flat North Sea, seeking
shells that might be words
washed in on a westerly
breeze, dandiprat jewels caught
by the rocks, the ice:
emeralds, diamonds, rubies:
old overcoats of the wiggly
worms, bracelets for the
cucumbers of the sea
he sits giving birth to
poems falling out like
ferries from the lea.

uncollected

You expressed
Interest
In the rainmaker
Even though your wife
Oh-my-godded at
The thought of where
You were headed
With it

Now next day
The rains have
Shown their face
Her plans are wetted
Out, the stick
Has done its work
And so it slinks

On the shelf
A line to a forgotten
Place, another
World, and for a
Moment you were
There in its
Primeval craw

Go out
And feel the waters on your face
And pull her down into
The dripping grass
The rainmaker quietly
says.

from Sometime the Garden

I have seen it all
The rise and fall

Of life, the shape
And thrust of the
Wide Earth

The coming and
The going of the
Rain

uncollected

Imagine blindness
Louvred shutters shut
Suddenly on all art and
The world, blinds
Drawn,
But now sweetness
Sings in every ear
Music, birdsong, voice,
The wind through trees
Plays on

Imagine deafness though
No light, no sound,
A silent house, the
Opera gone, and
Only feel and touch
And smell remain
A chance to burble
Out a dream to sense
The pines, to drink the
Champagne still

If taste and scent
Absent themselves
Then what is left
In that dark
Tomb that stays
As life, but now
Is cloyed by heavy
Nothingness?

A touch, a loved one's
Touch on cheek or thigh
With lips or fingers
Still content to send
A shiver down a spine

That gone and all
We have is thought
And thought with
Just one thought:
"How long to roam,
Bear I this abject
Loneliness?"

uncollected

I have nothing
I have everything
Full to empty
Over stones most
Ancient my soul
Flows, the hour-
glass has my bones:
As they fall,
They swirl, as they
Swirl, they speak -
Of old things, so
Old no photon
Birthed has ever
Reached another
Eye, yet they
Speak in spate:
I have everything
I have all.

uncollected (for Richard and Hilary Elfick)

Her legs
Went all the way up

To an interesting place

Cambridge

Who'd have thought it
Land of dons and gowns
Drowned in a sea
Of stilettoed limbs
Skirts less long than
A wink of sun
On the wettest
Day and she

Bending down
To take her seat
Amidst the
Gaggle of her
Thigh-bared friends
No care for who
Might glimpse their
Neverlands
And the waiter
Turned to us with gaze to heaven
Crossing himself.

uncollected

White:
Plump pouches
Rising to pinched
Citrine,
Wagging in the gale.
I am reminded
Of the other
White flowers
I have seen.
The foxglove's
Strokes like
The lines
Through
Your addresses,
Struck out,
Each,
Leaving just
One, the last.
I have not
Spirit to
Strike it through
With my pen,
A final slanted
Line,
Emphatic as
The foxglove's
Lean.

uncollected

Butterfly jiggling
All through, against
The window backlit,
Framed by diamonds,
Sending draughts
Along the aisle
That add a twist
To sunlight streaming
In, dancing, wanting
To be out there with
The gravestones in the
March air. All through
I'm thinking how cool
To place that flutterer
In a simple jar or cup
Order of Service as
A lid and let it fly,
When all is said and
Done and dust has
gone to dust.
But a dream
To cause such
Commotion, and a doubt
About keeping intact
Delicate wings, follow
Out the coffin with
Its flower crown,
Let things be.

uncollected

These trees bear
Strange fruit
At low
Tide, the knotted
Rope by the
Knarled roots.

A thousand
Kids have
Swung toes

Into the same
Sea that took
Away the trees'
Rich soil, left
Them
Nursery-hand
Spiders

Crooked
Fingers scratching
The pebbles
And weed

Place to hang.